1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to project management, and, more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to analyzing interdependencies between project team members.
2. Background of the Invention
Understanding interaction and interdependency relationships between project team members working on a development project is often difficult for a project manager. Development projects, such as a requirements specification or a proposal document, often have 10 to 50 or more project team members who author, edit, and manage the development project. While project managers have various tools to monitor and assess the progress of the development project, interdependency relationships between project team members, and impact that one project team member has on another project team member, are much more difficult to quantitatively assess and interpret.
During the execution of a development project, it is often recognized that the project begins to fall behind schedule. Typically, when the project manager recognizes that the project is slipping behind schedule, resources are added to work on tasks that require completion. However, by adding additional resources (e.g., project team members) to the development project, additional intercommunication between the new and old project team members is required as the new project team members initially face a steep learning curve to understand the development project and their role in completing the development project. The combination of the learning curve and intercommunication creates inefficiencies during the development project because original project team members are subject to devoting time and resources in assisting new project team members.
A curve may be formed to mathematically describe completion time for a development project and the number of project team members working on the development project. Such a curve may show a large amount of time required to complete a project with only a few project team members. As the number of project team members increases, the amount of time to complete the development project decreases, but upon adding too many project team members, the amount of time that the project team takes to complete the development project begins to increase. The increase occurs because inefficiencies are created due to added communication and interdependency relationships between the project team members. It has been shown that communicational complexity increases by n(n−1)/2, where n is the number of project team members that must communicate in order to complete the development project. Interdependency relationships are formed as project team members perform certain roles or job functions that require one project team member to work on matters created, defined by, or previously worked on by a second project team member.
In large project developments, it is often impractical or extremely difficult to recognize that problems with interdependency relationships exist between the project team members. One reason that makes it difficult to recognize interdependency relationship problems is that day-to-day interactions and work efforts between project team members are generally at a level to which project managers are not exposed. For example, a senior project team member of a proposal team may often be casually supervising several junior team members by assisting in writing and/or editing duties during the course of the development project. However, the extent of the supervisory role by the senior project team member may not be fully understood or appreciated by the project manager as the supervisory role is not a planned duty of the senior member, but simply a professional courtesy—a role not anticipated to have an impact on the development project. In other words, the supervisory role is an unintended consequence of including junior project team members on a complex project. And, without expressly notifying the project manager of the supervision being provided by the senior project team member to the junior project team member(s), the inefficiencies created due to added interdependency relationships cannot be properly managed by the project team manager. Also, impact on one project team member due to work performed by another project team member is difficult to quantitatively assess. Admittedly, identifying interdependency relationships between the project team members is an overwhelming and difficult task.